I am paying for internet (what?!), and my time is running out, so I´m going to give as brief an update as possible. I am alive and well! Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! Kicking! Good morning sunshine! Everything in Baiona has gone better than well. Here is a short list of what has happened:
- I arrived yesterday and walked around the exterior of what used to be a fort and is now a hotel (but still surrounded by ancient and imposing walls!). Then I walked around the interior. There is a miniature forest inside! Most impressive!
- Yesterday evening I walked up a mountain to reach the old mills, which looked infinitely closer on the map. They were not most impressive. A few rocks, suggestive of old mills. Maybe I didn´t see them at all. Maybe the signs lied to me. Well, I´ll have to go again! I did, however, keep going up the mountain (it´s so hard to turn around once I´m going up -- there´s always another corner to turn, where I might discover something wonderful), and eventually reached a closed off field. I noticed a gap in the fence that seemed well-traveled and went through -- I discovered something wonderful! A dam and a great pool of crystal-clear and deep blue water, the source for the entire town. I walked along the path that hung over it, and then into a forest, where I wandered along dirt roads for a while. I´m not doing it justice at all, but the clock is ticking so I can´t try.
- This morning I went to a market in a neighboring town and spent a whole hour there. It was enormous and had everything anyone could possibly want, including furniture and stolen watches. I bought supplies for the week (with my appetite, they will last two days) -- bananas and empanadillas with bacalao and tuna inside. Later I bought chocolate, chocolate milk, and fresh orange juice, which is my latest inexplicable and insatiable craving. I´m going to have ulcers by the end of my stay here. But not scurvy.
- Later in the morning I went to the docks, where, putting into action my plan of being fearlessly outgoing, I immediately approached a man who was cleaning his hook line. Juan Jose talked to me a lot! I took many pages of notes (I´ve decided that I have to learn shorthand) (in fact, it is my goal to learn this year, yes yes yes).
- Still later in the morning I met a suave gentleman named Lito, who took me on a one-hour tour around the castle. He told me about everything -- fishing, the history of the region, the history of buildings, politics, his values. He offered to take me up to see the petroglyphs on the mountain in the evening, to which I replied, ´Madsfjasdff´, unsure of whether I should trust him. I spent all day thinking about it and playing out escape scenarios in my head (in case he turned out to be a rapist and murderer). I am great at kung fu and running down mountains in my head.
- In the afternoon I took a nap at Spanish break time. Then I went to the lonja to see the fish auction, at which there were about nine boxes of fish. Nothing at all! I met wonderful people, though, most of whose names I´ve forgotten but who told me that I was oh-so-welcome and that they would help me in anything they could. Guillermo, the seller of the fish, was particularly kind, and went around introducing me to people.
- I decided that I would go with Lito up the mountain (Mami, you can lecture at me if you want), and I didn´t have to use kung fu at all! We saw the petroglyphs, which are 4000 years old, and talked about what things of our civilization would last 4000 years (the road systems -- I´m so excited for archaeologists to discover those). Then he took me up another mountain to the Alto de la Groba, from where we saw everything! I am a sucker for views. We looked at the Vigo ria, where I will be on Friday. Then he took me to the Virgen de la Roca, an enormous Virgin Mary made of rock and sculpted in 1910. She holds a ship in her right hand, and we went up a narrow winding staircase and stood in the ship! Her marble face is beautiful.
- On my way to this internet cafe I passed a small soccer field where a little boy was practicing shots against his goalie father. The mother was standing nearby and holding a little drum, and every time he made a goal, she drumrolled and cheered. When he missed, she just cheered. I beamed.
Here is what will (I hope) happen soon:
- Tonight I will go to a Civil Guard band concert in a public square in town.
- Tomorrow I will go back to the docks and speak with Juan Jose. By Wednesday we´ll be so chummy-chum-chum that he will invite me onto his boat (or: I will ask him).
- In two or so weeks I will camp at the Islas Cies, which I can see from here and which call to me. Nature!
This ended up being a long quickie. Thank you, Mario Teaches Typing -- I have six minutes left.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
A rainbow or two and a ferry ride (La Guardia, Spain)
After writing my last post, I went on a walk to the far reaches of La Guardia (which are not so very far from anything – this is a small town) and saw a rainbow! It was bright and enormous, a whole arc with a beginning and an end, and I got so excited that I looked around wildly for somebody to tell about it – but the streets were empty. I had to enjoy it by myself. That’s becoming the theme of this trip; it will take me a while to get used to it (or I’ll crack and start talking to my imaginary friend Eduardo -- I’m sure that will make it even more difficult to find someone to tell about exciting things.)
The next morning, in the hours before Antonio the fisherman would come to port and his friends would help him untangle and de-fish his net, I went on a walk along the coast. LO AND BEHOLD: another rainbow! This one went right into the ocean, and a ship passed through it as I watched – I’ll have to keep a look-out for extra colorful people these next few days. There were, again, no other people around, so I pointed it out to the snails crawling over the rocks and grass. I’m sure that they sat there for a few moments in awe of refraction. Along the coast, I passed several ruins (yes!), one of which was mostly underwater. It appears to have been some sort of fort . . . but I have yet to ask about it. I’ve also seen many ruins of another kind -- new but empty houses that are beginning to break down. They are everywhere, and every time I see one I’m tempted to move in (“Can’t get cheaper than this! Take that, hostel!” – because hostels here are expensive). It’s a constant reminder, though, that Spain is going through two economic crises: the international crisis we know and love, and also the building crisis. There are half-finished and finished but empty houses and apartment complexes everywhere.
At eleven I was at the docks, speaking with several old men. Two of them told me about the connections between Galicia and the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – many Gallegos have moved there, and many have moved back, so that, as my hostel keeper had told me earlier in the morning, there were “many, and I mean many” Puerto Ricans here in La Guardia. Two nearby streets are called Puerto Rico and Republica Dominicana, and I’ve seen a Villa Borinquen as well as a Café Quisqueya. I spoke with Benito again, and this time tried to tell him more directly about my project, but I think that I didn’t make sense to him. When I asked him if he would make a drawing with which he would explain to someone what time was, he just kept talking, and I felt like a failure – but really I’m learning! I was expecting to approach this topic obliquely anyway, and I’m sure that as I observe and experience more my understanding will become more concrete. I’ve decided that these first few weeks are the trial period – I’ve been in a big city, am now in a small town, and will soon be visiting even smaller villages and another large city. I’ll get a feel for each of the settings and then decide how best to distribute the rest of my time in Galicia (because time is a commodity). And soon I’ll be in a better position to compare! It’s difficult to do that right now, having visited only two ports.
Speaking of comparisons, I do have one to share. Benito said something interesting when I first asked him about time: “The fisherman always leaves at the same time, but he never knows when he’ll come back. It could be the same day or it could be two days later. The sea is treacherous.” He mentioned fogs (and what if the fisherman has forgotten his compass?) and bad weather. I imagine that this happens occasionally here, because the boats are small and manned by only one person (personned by only one man?), but I can’t imagine any of the fishermen in La Corunha telling me this. They have larger ships with built-in computers that tell them exactly where they are, and, while they’re still at the mercy of the weather, they probably manage to avoid getting stuck where they don’t want to be. In La Guardia, things seem a little less certain than at La Corunha – and, because there’s much less demand, it’s okay. Nobody expects perfect delivery all of the time, and, if bad weather or some other treachery of the sea throws a wrench in the commercial machine, at least the machine is smaller.
In the afternoon I walked back along the coast to Camposancos, where one can take a ferry to the Portuguese town of Caminha. (On the way, I was able to climb on the ruins in the water because the tide had fallen!) I did this, and wandered around Caminha for a few hours. It is a beautiful town, with tiled buildings and long stone paths and well-kept gardens and parks, and many churches, several of which I went into. It felt like Portugal, not Spain, although I don’t know enough about Portugal to say why. And it was colder! No joke! I wonder if it has to do with the way the wind blows. Or maybe Portuguese weathermen are meaner than Spanish ones.
I came back to the hostel and read . . . “Dracula”! I’m about three-quarters through now and think that most of the characters need to get with it (and spend way too much time writing in their journals . . . but who am I to judge?).
This morning I went to the mercadillo, where, instead of fish and food, as I had expected, I found stalls and stalls of clothing. I went grocery shopping instead of clothes shopping, then visited the tiny Maritime Museum (reading every single word in it, in Gallego, took me about fifteen minutes) and left to wander the coast on the other side of town – more ruins in the water, and a lot of crumbling stone walls that now encircle bushy wild ferns and prickly plants instead of the gardens that they probably housed before. Tonight there is a public music festival in the town’s open-air auditorium! And tomorrow morning I leave La Guardia for Baiona, after which I will go to Vigo.
The next morning, in the hours before Antonio the fisherman would come to port and his friends would help him untangle and de-fish his net, I went on a walk along the coast. LO AND BEHOLD: another rainbow! This one went right into the ocean, and a ship passed through it as I watched – I’ll have to keep a look-out for extra colorful people these next few days. There were, again, no other people around, so I pointed it out to the snails crawling over the rocks and grass. I’m sure that they sat there for a few moments in awe of refraction. Along the coast, I passed several ruins (yes!), one of which was mostly underwater. It appears to have been some sort of fort . . . but I have yet to ask about it. I’ve also seen many ruins of another kind -- new but empty houses that are beginning to break down. They are everywhere, and every time I see one I’m tempted to move in (“Can’t get cheaper than this! Take that, hostel!” – because hostels here are expensive). It’s a constant reminder, though, that Spain is going through two economic crises: the international crisis we know and love, and also the building crisis. There are half-finished and finished but empty houses and apartment complexes everywhere.
At eleven I was at the docks, speaking with several old men. Two of them told me about the connections between Galicia and the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – many Gallegos have moved there, and many have moved back, so that, as my hostel keeper had told me earlier in the morning, there were “many, and I mean many” Puerto Ricans here in La Guardia. Two nearby streets are called Puerto Rico and Republica Dominicana, and I’ve seen a Villa Borinquen as well as a Café Quisqueya. I spoke with Benito again, and this time tried to tell him more directly about my project, but I think that I didn’t make sense to him. When I asked him if he would make a drawing with which he would explain to someone what time was, he just kept talking, and I felt like a failure – but really I’m learning! I was expecting to approach this topic obliquely anyway, and I’m sure that as I observe and experience more my understanding will become more concrete. I’ve decided that these first few weeks are the trial period – I’ve been in a big city, am now in a small town, and will soon be visiting even smaller villages and another large city. I’ll get a feel for each of the settings and then decide how best to distribute the rest of my time in Galicia (because time is a commodity). And soon I’ll be in a better position to compare! It’s difficult to do that right now, having visited only two ports.
Speaking of comparisons, I do have one to share. Benito said something interesting when I first asked him about time: “The fisherman always leaves at the same time, but he never knows when he’ll come back. It could be the same day or it could be two days later. The sea is treacherous.” He mentioned fogs (and what if the fisherman has forgotten his compass?) and bad weather. I imagine that this happens occasionally here, because the boats are small and manned by only one person (personned by only one man?), but I can’t imagine any of the fishermen in La Corunha telling me this. They have larger ships with built-in computers that tell them exactly where they are, and, while they’re still at the mercy of the weather, they probably manage to avoid getting stuck where they don’t want to be. In La Guardia, things seem a little less certain than at La Corunha – and, because there’s much less demand, it’s okay. Nobody expects perfect delivery all of the time, and, if bad weather or some other treachery of the sea throws a wrench in the commercial machine, at least the machine is smaller.
In the afternoon I walked back along the coast to Camposancos, where one can take a ferry to the Portuguese town of Caminha. (On the way, I was able to climb on the ruins in the water because the tide had fallen!) I did this, and wandered around Caminha for a few hours. It is a beautiful town, with tiled buildings and long stone paths and well-kept gardens and parks, and many churches, several of which I went into. It felt like Portugal, not Spain, although I don’t know enough about Portugal to say why. And it was colder! No joke! I wonder if it has to do with the way the wind blows. Or maybe Portuguese weathermen are meaner than Spanish ones.
I came back to the hostel and read . . . “Dracula”! I’m about three-quarters through now and think that most of the characters need to get with it (and spend way too much time writing in their journals . . . but who am I to judge?).
This morning I went to the mercadillo, where, instead of fish and food, as I had expected, I found stalls and stalls of clothing. I went grocery shopping instead of clothes shopping, then visited the tiny Maritime Museum (reading every single word in it, in Gallego, took me about fifteen minutes) and left to wander the coast on the other side of town – more ruins in the water, and a lot of crumbling stone walls that now encircle bushy wild ferns and prickly plants instead of the gardens that they probably housed before. Tonight there is a public music festival in the town’s open-air auditorium! And tomorrow morning I leave La Guardia for Baiona, after which I will go to Vigo.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A new town (La Guardia, Spain)
It’s Thursday evening, and I’ve spent a little bit more than a full day at La Guardia, which is one river away from Portugal. (I plan to cross by ferry to the Portuguese town of Caminha tomorrow or the day after!) La Guardia is smaller than La Corunha and much more vertical – the first few times I asked people how to get to the port, they said, “Oh, just go down!” Going down (it is a steep down) always gets you to the port; going up (it is an even steeper up) always gets you to the main road. Around the town are hills covered in trees, a wide river, and the ocean, which is always a different shade of blue and breathtaking. (I am pretty sure that I was a sea creature in another life. Perhaps a giant squid.)
My timing so far has been impeccable. Yesterday I walked to the port and asked when the fish auction was. “Oh! It’s right now!” the woman said. So I walked to the lonja, a small building that sits next to the concrete slide leading into the water. The entrance was guarded by the same signs I encountered in La Corunha --“ONLY AUTHORIZED PEOPLE WITH PORT BUSINESS” – and six mostly toothless and white-haired (or no-haired) men and women who blinked at me. Thinking that it would be rude to try to sneak past them after obviously having read and understood the sign, I asked where I should go to get permission, and suddenly they were all talking at once: “Oh, permission, no no no, just go on in, you’re welcome, you don’t need authorization, right through here, walk on in, go ahead!” People here are so friendly! I will digress for a moment to explain just how friendly they are: In La Corunha, every time I asked for directions, the person would either give me detailed directions and make sure that I understood them or, if they didn’t know, ask somebody else who was passing by. One man walked all around a plaza with me looking for a specific bus and said, “Listen, if we don’t find this stop, I will take you myself by car!” (I’ve promised several people that I won’t be trusting this year, so I said, “Oh, mmm, hmm” and didn’t have to worry any further, because we found the stop.) Last night in La Guardia I asked a pair of women if they could tell me where to find a pizzeria, and they walked with me five blocks and said, “There you go! It’s a block away. Walk up that hill and you can’t miss it!” This is not to mention how willing the fishermen are to speak with me, a visitor who watches them while they work and asks ignorant (getting less ignorant as the days go by!) questions.
Now that we’re on the topic of fishermen I can go back to writing about the lonja in La Guardia, which is tiny. The auction is much calmer and quieter than in La Corunha, because it’s done electronically: a big screen shows the falling prices, and, if somebody wants to stop at a certain price, they push a button on their little individual controls. The fare is quite different, too. Here, most of the boxes are full of percebes, which, Google informs me, are called “goose barnacles” in English. In the north, they are extremely dangerous to harvest – they form on rocks lapped by strong waves, and people tie themselves to ropes and try to time their quick descents well (some inevitably die each year). Here in the south, they grow in calmer waters, and it is women who harvest them! I had been wondering why there were so many women in the lonja. Apparently the percebes that grow along the shore are collected by percebeiras, and those that grow on rocks in the open sea are collected by men, percebeiros. Also interesting is the time of harvest! Because the percebes are only exposed during low tide, they are collected mostly during the full and new moon – about ten to twelve days a month. These days, most of the men with boats are collecting them, so there were few fish up for sale at the lonja. I imagine that this will be different in a week. Also, octopus season starts in the first week of July, and everyone has told me that they are looking forward to it, since they can count on making a lot of money. If they catch octopi, that is. That is a big “if” that keeps coming up in conversation. Whenever I ask about seasonal fish, the fishermen say something like, “Well, yes, the sardines come around this time, if they come.” This year, they told me, they haven’t come.
That “if” is the reason many people have decided not to fish, a man named Luis told me. In the past few decades, the number of fishermen in La Guardia has gone from thousands to around 300; most young people choose to work on land, in factories or other businesses, instead of going out to sea like their parents (fathers) had. He had an interesting life story! He used to work on a huge ship that captured mostly squid in the far north. He and his crewmates would be on the ship for four to five months at a time (!), and, after crossing the Atlantic, they would be dropped off somewhere in South America and given money for a plane ride home, where they’d spend a month or so before setting off again. It was a hard life, but he was able to retire at 55 with a monthly stipend that he finds generous. Now he comes to the docks to talk with his friends – I think that they played together as children!
I met two other people I hope to encounter again: Benito, who is by far the most talkative of the men I’ve met so far, and spews useful information without much prompting (the exact schedules of the fishermen, for example), and David, a much younger man (also extremely good-looking, so in my head I call him “Dashing David”) who told me about fishing while he eviscerated congrios. I tried to put on a poker face, but I may have twitched a little when I noticed that one of the fish was still moving as he cut into it. Aaaagh. I’ve been vegetarian again all afternoon.
If I stay in La Guardia for a few more days (I have to see how things go!), my schedule will look like this: at 11ish I’ll be at the port to see a few fishermen untangling and cleaning their nets and talk with them. At 4:30ish I’ll be back at the port to chat with people at the lonja and talk with fishermen who are putting their nets back into their boats. I really want to get in a boat at some point (at 4:00 am!), but the ones here are built for one person and I doubt that I could “disappear” on command – I’d be too much in the way.
In the early mornings, afternoons and late evenings, I will explore! Today I climbed up to the Monte de Santa Trega, where I saw a 2000-year-old castro (collection of round stone houses) and Portugal (across the river!). I went into an archaeology museum at the top and when I came out, I was inside a cloud! Fantastic. In yet another life I was a bacterium in a water droplet.
My timing so far has been impeccable. Yesterday I walked to the port and asked when the fish auction was. “Oh! It’s right now!” the woman said. So I walked to the lonja, a small building that sits next to the concrete slide leading into the water. The entrance was guarded by the same signs I encountered in La Corunha --“ONLY AUTHORIZED PEOPLE WITH PORT BUSINESS” – and six mostly toothless and white-haired (or no-haired) men and women who blinked at me. Thinking that it would be rude to try to sneak past them after obviously having read and understood the sign, I asked where I should go to get permission, and suddenly they were all talking at once: “Oh, permission, no no no, just go on in, you’re welcome, you don’t need authorization, right through here, walk on in, go ahead!” People here are so friendly! I will digress for a moment to explain just how friendly they are: In La Corunha, every time I asked for directions, the person would either give me detailed directions and make sure that I understood them or, if they didn’t know, ask somebody else who was passing by. One man walked all around a plaza with me looking for a specific bus and said, “Listen, if we don’t find this stop, I will take you myself by car!” (I’ve promised several people that I won’t be trusting this year, so I said, “Oh, mmm, hmm” and didn’t have to worry any further, because we found the stop.) Last night in La Guardia I asked a pair of women if they could tell me where to find a pizzeria, and they walked with me five blocks and said, “There you go! It’s a block away. Walk up that hill and you can’t miss it!” This is not to mention how willing the fishermen are to speak with me, a visitor who watches them while they work and asks ignorant (getting less ignorant as the days go by!) questions.
Now that we’re on the topic of fishermen I can go back to writing about the lonja in La Guardia, which is tiny. The auction is much calmer and quieter than in La Corunha, because it’s done electronically: a big screen shows the falling prices, and, if somebody wants to stop at a certain price, they push a button on their little individual controls. The fare is quite different, too. Here, most of the boxes are full of percebes, which, Google informs me, are called “goose barnacles” in English. In the north, they are extremely dangerous to harvest – they form on rocks lapped by strong waves, and people tie themselves to ropes and try to time their quick descents well (some inevitably die each year). Here in the south, they grow in calmer waters, and it is women who harvest them! I had been wondering why there were so many women in the lonja. Apparently the percebes that grow along the shore are collected by percebeiras, and those that grow on rocks in the open sea are collected by men, percebeiros. Also interesting is the time of harvest! Because the percebes are only exposed during low tide, they are collected mostly during the full and new moon – about ten to twelve days a month. These days, most of the men with boats are collecting them, so there were few fish up for sale at the lonja. I imagine that this will be different in a week. Also, octopus season starts in the first week of July, and everyone has told me that they are looking forward to it, since they can count on making a lot of money. If they catch octopi, that is. That is a big “if” that keeps coming up in conversation. Whenever I ask about seasonal fish, the fishermen say something like, “Well, yes, the sardines come around this time, if they come.” This year, they told me, they haven’t come.
That “if” is the reason many people have decided not to fish, a man named Luis told me. In the past few decades, the number of fishermen in La Guardia has gone from thousands to around 300; most young people choose to work on land, in factories or other businesses, instead of going out to sea like their parents (fathers) had. He had an interesting life story! He used to work on a huge ship that captured mostly squid in the far north. He and his crewmates would be on the ship for four to five months at a time (!), and, after crossing the Atlantic, they would be dropped off somewhere in South America and given money for a plane ride home, where they’d spend a month or so before setting off again. It was a hard life, but he was able to retire at 55 with a monthly stipend that he finds generous. Now he comes to the docks to talk with his friends – I think that they played together as children!
I met two other people I hope to encounter again: Benito, who is by far the most talkative of the men I’ve met so far, and spews useful information without much prompting (the exact schedules of the fishermen, for example), and David, a much younger man (also extremely good-looking, so in my head I call him “Dashing David”) who told me about fishing while he eviscerated congrios. I tried to put on a poker face, but I may have twitched a little when I noticed that one of the fish was still moving as he cut into it. Aaaagh. I’ve been vegetarian again all afternoon.
If I stay in La Guardia for a few more days (I have to see how things go!), my schedule will look like this: at 11ish I’ll be at the port to see a few fishermen untangling and cleaning their nets and talk with them. At 4:30ish I’ll be back at the port to chat with people at the lonja and talk with fishermen who are putting their nets back into their boats. I really want to get in a boat at some point (at 4:00 am!), but the ones here are built for one person and I doubt that I could “disappear” on command – I’d be too much in the way.
In the early mornings, afternoons and late evenings, I will explore! Today I climbed up to the Monte de Santa Trega, where I saw a 2000-year-old castro (collection of round stone houses) and Portugal (across the river!). I went into an archaeology museum at the top and when I came out, I was inside a cloud! Fantastic. In yet another life I was a bacterium in a water droplet.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
A stroke of good fortune (La Corunha, Spain)
I’m writing this on a train! I’ve just left A Corunha to go to A Guarda, which is smaller by a factor of 25(ish). The ride to Vigo, my in-between stop, takes about two hours, and I imagine that the bus ride the rest of the way will be short. Galicia is very small. (We are in a tunnel. We have emerged! Dense foliage! Rocky walls!)
Yesterday was wonderful. I successfully arose at 5:30 in the morning (unghmmph), and, when I arrived to the lonja, immediately found Guillermo’s wife, Mirela. We soon located Guillermo and their son, who is my age. They explained that the fish sale would be unusual that morning, because, in preparation for the Fiesta de San Juan in the evening, everyone would be buying sardines. (Horses! Houses! We are in Meirama.) It was true! The sardines were expensive and went fast; other fish were neglected. Guillermo and Mirela explained that they usually buy some fish to resell at 11:00, when they set up their smaller-scale operation at the dock, but the fish today were all either of poor quality or of unreasonably high price, so instead of seeing Guillermo in action, I was given a royal tour. He renamed all of the fish for me (this time I took photos in the same order that I wrote down the names, so that I can match them up later in my computer) and told me about his life – when he and his son wake up (it depends on the season; they always wake up about an hour and a half before sunrise, so at about 4:30 now and about 6:30/7:00 in the winter), what they do when they’re on the boat (they usually travel an hour out, then they use their sonar device to locate groups of fish and net them), what factors affect fishing (season, weather, climate – he said that the effects of global warming were noticeable – laws, luck). I also asked him about fish farms, wondering if they posed a threat to fishermen’s livelihoods, but he said that fish farms catered to a different market because the quality of the fish is so poor. (Another tunnel.) The four of us had a coffee at the cafeteria where I first met Fran, exchanged contact information, and parted ways.
The day was gray and I was feeling lonely, so, after taking a nap back at the hostel and filling my windowless room with the smell of dead fish, I decided to go to the beach and read (indulging my moodiness by sitting next to a gray sea). It was deserted! And the tide was low, so that all of the rocks that before had looked like ominous dark blobs beneath the water looked like, you know, rocks. I thought, “I’ll stay until the tide rises!” and almost (ooh the landscape is beautiful) fulfilled my plan. By the time I left, some of my arrival footprints were about ten feet from the new shore, underwater. I had to stand awkwardly by the street for a while, waiting for my pants to dry, and I noticed two things: An enormous sea-themed sculpture that I hadn’t seen before, and a group of teenagers rolling garbage bins full of wood onto the sand. Preparations for the night! The sculpture, it turned out, was made of cardboard and was actually a pyre. The young’uns (being all of 21 and thus infinitely superior to teenagers in wisdom and experience, I get to call them “young’uns”) (I’ve never known where to put the apostrophe/s in that word) were setting up the wood for a bonfire! I wandered on foot until I got lost, as is my wont, then found my way back to the hostel without consulting my map or asking for directions. I know: I am pretty impressive.
Back at the hostel I took another short nap (I think we just passed a corn field!) and then left to meet with Sylvia, one of the people from the day excursion on Saturday (with the husband named Juan and the baby named Julia). Loneliness, begone! Sylvia and I walked-and-talked to the hills with the stones by the sea, and she invited me to join her and a group of friends for the night festivities. Of course I was thrilled and said “YES!!!!!” but managed to keep some of the exclamation points in my head so as not to deafen her. At 8:00 we met with Juan and Julia, Puri and Antonio (who are 60 and 80, respectively, and exactly how I want to be when I am 60 and 80), and Marta, who was so kind that she offered me a ride to Lugo or Vigo or the town where she’s from, which lies on the path to Santiago de Compostela, at any time during the rest of my stay; she travels to those places often for work.
The Fiesta de San Juan is impressive! Every restaurant in the city sets up a grill – many on the street -- where they roast fresh and heavily salted sardines. And every resident of the city walks around to eat the sardines with bread and wine. Sylvia, who is a sardine aficionada, taught me how to properly dismantle the fish with my fingers, although I balked at the idea of eating the eyes, and we feasted first at a tavern and then in a park where there was live music, dancing, and a huge crowd! By that time the sun had set, and shortly after 11:00 we walked to the beach to see the midnight fireworks and the bonfires. The beach was covered in fire! The bonfires were so big and so hot that empty rings formed around them where people couldn’t stand, and we could see the flames on the sculpture when it was lit, even though we were far away. The fireworks were beautiful (fireworks are on the List of Things That Make Me Sympathetic to Humanity). The streets were full of drunken people. The air was cool and smelled of sardines and smoke (soon my room would smell like even more dead fish). The stars were aligned.
This is my stroke of good fortune: I always meet such good people! Sylvia, Juan and I agreed that we would go to the Playa de las Catedrales (google it!) at some point in August or September, and I hope that we make other plans, too! Simon and Almudena have also told me that I am welcome to stay with them the next time I am in A Corunha and not to hesitate to contact them for anything. Guillermo and Mirela were my unofficial (and then semi-official) guardians at the docks. I’m sad to leave new friends behind so quickly, but so happy to have them. Gush gush gush.
And now I’m on the bus on my way to La Guardia! The hills are covered in trees and little houses, and the driver is angry at the teenagers sitting behind me. What does the next week hold in store?! (It certainly holds more photos in my photo blog, but it looks like internet in La Guardia will be trickier than in La Corunha.)
Yesterday was wonderful. I successfully arose at 5:30 in the morning (unghmmph), and, when I arrived to the lonja, immediately found Guillermo’s wife, Mirela. We soon located Guillermo and their son, who is my age. They explained that the fish sale would be unusual that morning, because, in preparation for the Fiesta de San Juan in the evening, everyone would be buying sardines. (Horses! Houses! We are in Meirama.) It was true! The sardines were expensive and went fast; other fish were neglected. Guillermo and Mirela explained that they usually buy some fish to resell at 11:00, when they set up their smaller-scale operation at the dock, but the fish today were all either of poor quality or of unreasonably high price, so instead of seeing Guillermo in action, I was given a royal tour. He renamed all of the fish for me (this time I took photos in the same order that I wrote down the names, so that I can match them up later in my computer) and told me about his life – when he and his son wake up (it depends on the season; they always wake up about an hour and a half before sunrise, so at about 4:30 now and about 6:30/7:00 in the winter), what they do when they’re on the boat (they usually travel an hour out, then they use their sonar device to locate groups of fish and net them), what factors affect fishing (season, weather, climate – he said that the effects of global warming were noticeable – laws, luck). I also asked him about fish farms, wondering if they posed a threat to fishermen’s livelihoods, but he said that fish farms catered to a different market because the quality of the fish is so poor. (Another tunnel.) The four of us had a coffee at the cafeteria where I first met Fran, exchanged contact information, and parted ways.
The day was gray and I was feeling lonely, so, after taking a nap back at the hostel and filling my windowless room with the smell of dead fish, I decided to go to the beach and read (indulging my moodiness by sitting next to a gray sea). It was deserted! And the tide was low, so that all of the rocks that before had looked like ominous dark blobs beneath the water looked like, you know, rocks. I thought, “I’ll stay until the tide rises!” and almost (ooh the landscape is beautiful) fulfilled my plan. By the time I left, some of my arrival footprints were about ten feet from the new shore, underwater. I had to stand awkwardly by the street for a while, waiting for my pants to dry, and I noticed two things: An enormous sea-themed sculpture that I hadn’t seen before, and a group of teenagers rolling garbage bins full of wood onto the sand. Preparations for the night! The sculpture, it turned out, was made of cardboard and was actually a pyre. The young’uns (being all of 21 and thus infinitely superior to teenagers in wisdom and experience, I get to call them “young’uns”) (I’ve never known where to put the apostrophe/s in that word) were setting up the wood for a bonfire! I wandered on foot until I got lost, as is my wont, then found my way back to the hostel without consulting my map or asking for directions. I know: I am pretty impressive.
Back at the hostel I took another short nap (I think we just passed a corn field!) and then left to meet with Sylvia, one of the people from the day excursion on Saturday (with the husband named Juan and the baby named Julia). Loneliness, begone! Sylvia and I walked-and-talked to the hills with the stones by the sea, and she invited me to join her and a group of friends for the night festivities. Of course I was thrilled and said “YES!!!!!” but managed to keep some of the exclamation points in my head so as not to deafen her. At 8:00 we met with Juan and Julia, Puri and Antonio (who are 60 and 80, respectively, and exactly how I want to be when I am 60 and 80), and Marta, who was so kind that she offered me a ride to Lugo or Vigo or the town where she’s from, which lies on the path to Santiago de Compostela, at any time during the rest of my stay; she travels to those places often for work.
The Fiesta de San Juan is impressive! Every restaurant in the city sets up a grill – many on the street -- where they roast fresh and heavily salted sardines. And every resident of the city walks around to eat the sardines with bread and wine. Sylvia, who is a sardine aficionada, taught me how to properly dismantle the fish with my fingers, although I balked at the idea of eating the eyes, and we feasted first at a tavern and then in a park where there was live music, dancing, and a huge crowd! By that time the sun had set, and shortly after 11:00 we walked to the beach to see the midnight fireworks and the bonfires. The beach was covered in fire! The bonfires were so big and so hot that empty rings formed around them where people couldn’t stand, and we could see the flames on the sculpture when it was lit, even though we were far away. The fireworks were beautiful (fireworks are on the List of Things That Make Me Sympathetic to Humanity). The streets were full of drunken people. The air was cool and smelled of sardines and smoke (soon my room would smell like even more dead fish). The stars were aligned.
This is my stroke of good fortune: I always meet such good people! Sylvia, Juan and I agreed that we would go to the Playa de las Catedrales (google it!) at some point in August or September, and I hope that we make other plans, too! Simon and Almudena have also told me that I am welcome to stay with them the next time I am in A Corunha and not to hesitate to contact them for anything. Guillermo and Mirela were my unofficial (and then semi-official) guardians at the docks. I’m sad to leave new friends behind so quickly, but so happy to have them. Gush gush gush.
And now I’m on the bus on my way to La Guardia! The hills are covered in trees and little houses, and the driver is angry at the teenagers sitting behind me. What does the next week hold in store?! (It certainly holds more photos in my photo blog, but it looks like internet in La Guardia will be trickier than in La Corunha.)
Monday, June 22, 2009
A few long walks and a pondering (La Corunha, Spain)
In an effort to exhaust myself thoroughly during the daytime so that I fall asleep early and it’s easier to wake up at the godforsaken hour of five-thirty tomorrow, I’ve spent most of the past two days walking. Yesterday I walked along the coast to the hills with the stones (my favorite spot in the city) and on to the Casa del Hombre, a museum about the human body, where I learned that the average person can distinguish between 2000 and 4000 smells and that the insides of our bones look like the scene of a silly string crime. I watched a movie about dinosaurs in Patagonia (which was clearly aimed at children -- but in 3-D!!! so I couldn’t resist) (I was almost eaten by a Giganotosaurus!), then went back to Alfonso’s apartment. He showed me his short film and we talked for a while before I came to the hostel. I had pleasant dreams.
My goal for today was to reach the Portinho, a tiny port beyond the Monte de San Pedro. I took a bus to San Pedro de Visma, a small collection of buildings that used to be a village but is now an extension of the city, and walked along a narrow road through grassy fields towards the coast. Before reaching the Portinho, though, I was distracted by a large hill. Every time I see something that goes up, I feel a strong compulsion to climb it – and so I discovered (the same way that Columbus discovered the Americas) the Parque de Bens, where I wandered for a few hours. Green hills! Some trees! Rocks! Old men with little dogs! Old dogs with little men! An industrial complex yonder in the distance! I eventually made it to the port, where there were zero boats and exactly six people, all of whom were sitting in the restaurant where I had a lunch of twice-fried eggs (a breaded and fried patty made of fried eggs – I think). Mmm. Along the Paseo Maritimo on my way back to the city, I met a scuba diver, who told me about the harm that the construction of the new port was causing the environment. Apparently there are large ships that, in the process of looking for solid rock under the water, displace tons of sand and wreak havoc on the sea floor. “If I had the means,” Jose said, “I’d blow them all up! And shoot all the politicians!” It is sad.
I’ve been reading a book called “In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension” by Dan Falk, and I find it pretty good. I’ve learned many things – e.g. it was in the 13th century that a number of things that didn’t used to be measured precisely, like weight and currency, were subjected to intense quantification (in Europe); time was one of these. I’ll give a good summary of the book when I’m done reading it, but for now I want to ramble about something that has been bugging me for years. I wrote this a few years ago:
“I'm having trouble thinking of something, or figuring out how to think of it. In the book ‘Flatland’ (which I haven't actually read), a sphere drops into a two-dimensional world, startling a . . . square or a triangle or an octagon or something. The poor little 2-D guy sees a point appear out of nowhere, and the point becomes a very small circle that grows until it reaches its maximum diameter and then begins to shrink again until it's a point and disappears. The square/triangle/octagon probably thinks, ‘Good God!’ My trouble is -- how big is the point at which the sphere starts to pass through the two-dimensional universe? It's ‘infinitesimally small,’ but that quickly turns into ‘small but measurable,’ and I just don't understand that. When does the transition happen? How can something come out of nothing? It's not an uncommon scenario -- imagine, oh, someone turning a corner. At first you don't see the person and in the next instant you can. Maybe the problem is the idea of ‘instant,’ breaking up time into moments, when it's maybe a continuum. I guess that that extends into breaking up space, when maybe space, too, is a continuum. I am not making any sense at all but oh man it's totally mind-befuddling.”
Now I’ve read “Flatland,” but I still don’t understand it!! It has everything to do with motion, it seems (that’s what I’ve been reading in the book – Newton and Leibniz’s disagreements about the essence of time and motion) – it is motion, change, that allows one to link time and space, and that’s my question. Now I think this: Space may be a continuum, but matter is not. Matter is made of tiny particles (someone in the 28th century will read this and say, “Ha! Those fools!”) – in fact, it’s mostly made of the space in between them. So if something – say, a ruler – is coming around a corner, some period of time must elapse between position (0,0) and position (1 quark, 0), no matter how “fast” the ruler is moving. The same way there is a minimum fundamental size, there should be a corresponding minimum fundamental time unit. Or shouldn’t there be? The concept of “instant” or “moment” makes my head explode (not really) (eew). Same with “present.” But I'll write about that another day.
My goal for today was to reach the Portinho, a tiny port beyond the Monte de San Pedro. I took a bus to San Pedro de Visma, a small collection of buildings that used to be a village but is now an extension of the city, and walked along a narrow road through grassy fields towards the coast. Before reaching the Portinho, though, I was distracted by a large hill. Every time I see something that goes up, I feel a strong compulsion to climb it – and so I discovered (the same way that Columbus discovered the Americas) the Parque de Bens, where I wandered for a few hours. Green hills! Some trees! Rocks! Old men with little dogs! Old dogs with little men! An industrial complex yonder in the distance! I eventually made it to the port, where there were zero boats and exactly six people, all of whom were sitting in the restaurant where I had a lunch of twice-fried eggs (a breaded and fried patty made of fried eggs – I think). Mmm. Along the Paseo Maritimo on my way back to the city, I met a scuba diver, who told me about the harm that the construction of the new port was causing the environment. Apparently there are large ships that, in the process of looking for solid rock under the water, displace tons of sand and wreak havoc on the sea floor. “If I had the means,” Jose said, “I’d blow them all up! And shoot all the politicians!” It is sad.
I’ve been reading a book called “In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension” by Dan Falk, and I find it pretty good. I’ve learned many things – e.g. it was in the 13th century that a number of things that didn’t used to be measured precisely, like weight and currency, were subjected to intense quantification (in Europe); time was one of these. I’ll give a good summary of the book when I’m done reading it, but for now I want to ramble about something that has been bugging me for years. I wrote this a few years ago:
“I'm having trouble thinking of something, or figuring out how to think of it. In the book ‘Flatland’ (which I haven't actually read), a sphere drops into a two-dimensional world, startling a . . . square or a triangle or an octagon or something. The poor little 2-D guy sees a point appear out of nowhere, and the point becomes a very small circle that grows until it reaches its maximum diameter and then begins to shrink again until it's a point and disappears. The square/triangle/octagon probably thinks, ‘Good God!’ My trouble is -- how big is the point at which the sphere starts to pass through the two-dimensional universe? It's ‘infinitesimally small,’ but that quickly turns into ‘small but measurable,’ and I just don't understand that. When does the transition happen? How can something come out of nothing? It's not an uncommon scenario -- imagine, oh, someone turning a corner. At first you don't see the person and in the next instant you can. Maybe the problem is the idea of ‘instant,’ breaking up time into moments, when it's maybe a continuum. I guess that that extends into breaking up space, when maybe space, too, is a continuum. I am not making any sense at all but oh man it's totally mind-befuddling.”
Now I’ve read “Flatland,” but I still don’t understand it!! It has everything to do with motion, it seems (that’s what I’ve been reading in the book – Newton and Leibniz’s disagreements about the essence of time and motion) – it is motion, change, that allows one to link time and space, and that’s my question. Now I think this: Space may be a continuum, but matter is not. Matter is made of tiny particles (someone in the 28th century will read this and say, “Ha! Those fools!”) – in fact, it’s mostly made of the space in between them. So if something – say, a ruler – is coming around a corner, some period of time must elapse between position (0,0) and position (1 quark, 0), no matter how “fast” the ruler is moving. The same way there is a minimum fundamental size, there should be a corresponding minimum fundamental time unit. Or shouldn’t there be? The concept of “instant” or “moment” makes my head explode (not really) (eew). Same with “present.” But I'll write about that another day.
A piece of mail?!
That's right! If you give me your address via e-mail, I'll send you something (postcard? letter? flying pig? flying SAUCER?!) at some point within the next two months. (Note to people who have received mail from me before: You'd think I'd have transferred AddressBook from my old computer to this one -- but I didn't. Please send me your address again.) Aiiiiiiiiiiepoaidfal;kjaspodifuawe.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
An auction and a glorious excursion (La Corunha, Baronha, and Corrubedo, Spain)
I had trouble falling asleep last night, so when my alarm went off at 5:15 in the morning, I firmly told it, “NO.” It ignored me, and I got up, the perfect picture of undeserved suffering (I even groaned) (there was probably a faint halo around my head). The streets were not completely deserted, as I’d expected them to be; a few party-hardiers were still partying (if not so hardily), but I took a cab anyway, which is usually against my principles. I made it to the lonja by 5:30ish, identified myself at the desk, feeling supremely important, and was given Visitor Badge #2. Then I went to the fish sale room, which was enormous and full of crates of dead fish and the people inspecting them. Guillermo and his wife were nowhere to be seen. After walking around for a few minutes (sharks! octopi! monster from the deep with a mouth as wide as a basketball! and many smaller fish – I’ll post pictures tomorrow), I decided to ask an official-looking woman how I might find them, and she said, “Oh, they’re one of our boats! They didn’t unload this morning.” Well shoot – no escort. I decided that the best thing to do was to play the Unobtrusive Game, because there were men with large hooks running around and people with determined auctioning glints in their eyes standing at the ready, and I didn’t want to get in the way of either of those.
This is how the fish auction worked: At about 6:10, a bell rang, and immediately a number of men spread throughout the room started yelling at the top of their lungs (“!Congrio! !Congrio! !Congrio! !Pulpo! !Pulpo! !Pulpo!”). When people started gathering around their crates, they started naming prices per kilo, counting down: “6 Euros! 5.90! 5.80! 5.70! . . .” At some point one of the buyers would imperceptibly signal the auctioneer to stop (the auctioneers must have a sixth sense), claim a crate or two by putting a little colored and labeled paper in it, and move on to the next type of fish. The auctioneer would start to yell again. By the time I left at 6:40, most types of fish in the room had been up for sale, and there were little colored papers in most of the crates. The guard asked me, “Well? Did you learn what you wanted to learn?” And I said, “Yes” but in my head I was celebrating my Unobtrusive Game victory – no hooks for me! On Tuesday I’ll go back; until then I’ll sleep later than 5:15.
Simon and his girlfriend Almudena picked me up at 10:30, and we drove two hours to Noia, which is on the western coast of Galicia, and then on to a spot near Baronha with a partially restored Celtic village – circles of stones on a grassy outcropping covered in big boulders. Their friends Sylvia and Juan, with their almost-one-year-old daughter Julia, met us nearby, and we all walked to the village and had a picnic lunch together on the rocks. Then we clambered – up and down the boulders, to the edge of the sea (cold!), to the top of the hill, around the Celtic circles, through some narrow gaps in the rocks, under the big blue sky . . . preposition the adjective noun. It was wonderful. We drove to a small park to see a dolmen, the type of structure made famous by Stonehenge (large vertical stones topped by a large horizontal one), took a rest under the shade of a tree, and then drove to a natural preserve that has a big dune in front of the sea. The sun was potent, so we had drinks in the shade until around six, when we ventured in search of the sea (hidden behind the big dune!). We found it (surprise!) – a very wide, very flat beach, with clear water that was almost too bright to look at – and got our feet wet. After returning to the little café for post-adventure drinks, we parted ways, and Simon, Almudena and I stopped at a sightseeing point on the way back to A Corunha. We saw all the way to the Illas Cies, which are near Vigo – things in Galicia are so close together. It’s like Mary Poppins’ purse; I don’t know how it all fits. Simon and Almudena marked on my map which places are the most interesting for fishing, so now I have concrete destinations (rather than “the coast”); figuring out transportation is the next challenge. Back to the city at 11:11 (we made wishes!) and then I was too tired to write this whole entry, so I’m finishing it the next day and cheating by changing the time in blogspot so that it looks like I wrote it on Saturday.
The places we visited were glorious, but the best part of the day was spending time with Simon, Almudena, Sylvia, Juan and little Julia. They are wonderfully kind people, and I am so fortunate to have met them. I told them about my project in detail, and we had a good conversation! Juan is a geologist and Sylvia studied a bit of geology in college before turning to biology, and I asked them how they made sense of the ages of things, ones that were in millions of years. They said that they thought in terms of processes – they see a spiky mountain and know that it is young because the top hasn’t been eroded yet, and they imagine something like a fast-motion video that focuses on the important parts (the key moments of the evolution). Sylvia also said that having Julia had changed her perception of time because she was watching a life develop so quickly – it was a wonder that Julia was growing and learning at the rate that she was, and it made her look at her own life differently. Almudena drew me a picture of time – a little dot with double-headed arrows all around it. She wrote: “Everything influences time and time influences everything. Time in itself doesn’t exist; it is a human invention.” And Simon told us that he thought about time in terms of calendars, but they form a sort of ring – January through May are a line, then June, July and August curve up (because they are summer months), then the rest of the months go back around. It doesn’t form a perfect circle, but it is a sort of cycle. We talked about how interesting it was that January 1st feels different to us – a new year! – even though it is just another day, and how humans are capable of putting imaginary boundaries on something so intangible as time.
I’ve put new pictures up on my photo blog (went a little trigger-happy with the uploading), and now I’m going to go explore again! Alfonso lent me his bike, and perhaps I’ll take it along the coast! My plan for Monday is to get to the Portinho, a little port with just a few boats far outside of the city, and talk to people there. On Tuesday I’m back at the docks, and on Wednesday afternoon I’ll probably leave A Corunha for A Guarda, far to the south. I’m sure that something will go wrong sometime soon – otherwise I’ll be upsetting the cosmic balance.
This is how the fish auction worked: At about 6:10, a bell rang, and immediately a number of men spread throughout the room started yelling at the top of their lungs (“!Congrio! !Congrio! !Congrio! !Pulpo! !Pulpo! !Pulpo!”). When people started gathering around their crates, they started naming prices per kilo, counting down: “6 Euros! 5.90! 5.80! 5.70! . . .” At some point one of the buyers would imperceptibly signal the auctioneer to stop (the auctioneers must have a sixth sense), claim a crate or two by putting a little colored and labeled paper in it, and move on to the next type of fish. The auctioneer would start to yell again. By the time I left at 6:40, most types of fish in the room had been up for sale, and there were little colored papers in most of the crates. The guard asked me, “Well? Did you learn what you wanted to learn?” And I said, “Yes” but in my head I was celebrating my Unobtrusive Game victory – no hooks for me! On Tuesday I’ll go back; until then I’ll sleep later than 5:15.
Simon and his girlfriend Almudena picked me up at 10:30, and we drove two hours to Noia, which is on the western coast of Galicia, and then on to a spot near Baronha with a partially restored Celtic village – circles of stones on a grassy outcropping covered in big boulders. Their friends Sylvia and Juan, with their almost-one-year-old daughter Julia, met us nearby, and we all walked to the village and had a picnic lunch together on the rocks. Then we clambered – up and down the boulders, to the edge of the sea (cold!), to the top of the hill, around the Celtic circles, through some narrow gaps in the rocks, under the big blue sky . . . preposition the adjective noun. It was wonderful. We drove to a small park to see a dolmen, the type of structure made famous by Stonehenge (large vertical stones topped by a large horizontal one), took a rest under the shade of a tree, and then drove to a natural preserve that has a big dune in front of the sea. The sun was potent, so we had drinks in the shade until around six, when we ventured in search of the sea (hidden behind the big dune!). We found it (surprise!) – a very wide, very flat beach, with clear water that was almost too bright to look at – and got our feet wet. After returning to the little café for post-adventure drinks, we parted ways, and Simon, Almudena and I stopped at a sightseeing point on the way back to A Corunha. We saw all the way to the Illas Cies, which are near Vigo – things in Galicia are so close together. It’s like Mary Poppins’ purse; I don’t know how it all fits. Simon and Almudena marked on my map which places are the most interesting for fishing, so now I have concrete destinations (rather than “the coast”); figuring out transportation is the next challenge. Back to the city at 11:11 (we made wishes!) and then I was too tired to write this whole entry, so I’m finishing it the next day and cheating by changing the time in blogspot so that it looks like I wrote it on Saturday.
The places we visited were glorious, but the best part of the day was spending time with Simon, Almudena, Sylvia, Juan and little Julia. They are wonderfully kind people, and I am so fortunate to have met them. I told them about my project in detail, and we had a good conversation! Juan is a geologist and Sylvia studied a bit of geology in college before turning to biology, and I asked them how they made sense of the ages of things, ones that were in millions of years. They said that they thought in terms of processes – they see a spiky mountain and know that it is young because the top hasn’t been eroded yet, and they imagine something like a fast-motion video that focuses on the important parts (the key moments of the evolution). Sylvia also said that having Julia had changed her perception of time because she was watching a life develop so quickly – it was a wonder that Julia was growing and learning at the rate that she was, and it made her look at her own life differently. Almudena drew me a picture of time – a little dot with double-headed arrows all around it. She wrote: “Everything influences time and time influences everything. Time in itself doesn’t exist; it is a human invention.” And Simon told us that he thought about time in terms of calendars, but they form a sort of ring – January through May are a line, then June, July and August curve up (because they are summer months), then the rest of the months go back around. It doesn’t form a perfect circle, but it is a sort of cycle. We talked about how interesting it was that January 1st feels different to us – a new year! – even though it is just another day, and how humans are capable of putting imaginary boundaries on something so intangible as time.
I’ve put new pictures up on my photo blog (went a little trigger-happy with the uploading), and now I’m going to go explore again! Alfonso lent me his bike, and perhaps I’ll take it along the coast! My plan for Monday is to get to the Portinho, a little port with just a few boats far outside of the city, and talk to people there. On Tuesday I’m back at the docks, and on Wednesday afternoon I’ll probably leave A Corunha for A Guarda, far to the south. I’m sure that something will go wrong sometime soon – otherwise I’ll be upsetting the cosmic balance.
Friday, June 19, 2009
An encounter with bureaucracy (La Corunha, Spain)
A lot of people seem eager to help me learn everything there is to know about fishing . . . but not everyone. I hadn’t yet received my permission e-mail from Port Authority Representative Luis by 10:00, when I wanted to leave the hostel to meet with Guillermo, my fisherman friend from yesterday, so I snuck into the port again. I walked past the storage garages and trucks and port police officers trying to look, at turns, extremely confident (“I belong here and I know exactly where I am headed and don’t you dare question me”) and inconspicuous (“You can’t see me”), but, alas! I gave myself away. I walked into the lonja building, where the same guard who was there yesterday didn’t smile at me, like she didn’t smile at me yesterday. And when I asked how to get to the waterfront, she didn’t answer but instead said, “You don’t have permission to be here.” Damn! I asked where I could get permission, and she sent me to the upstairs office. The people in the upstairs office said that they only had jurisdiction over the building itself, and not the waterfront outside of the building (that would be the Port Authority, and I have assumed permission from them), so I happily walked around the building to the place where Guillermo and his wife Mirela were selling their fish.
Guillermo greeted me like an old friend, and introduced me to Mirela as “the girl I was telling you about who is doing the study!” Some of the men from yesterday were there again, and they talked with me when Guillermo and Mirela were busy. When they weren’t busy, they told me that I had to come some day at 6:00 in the morning to see the big fish sales – the 11:00 business was small beans, the leftovers. Oh ignorant am I! I continue to underestimate the scale of things. The only problem was that the sales take place inside the building – and, as I had been told by the security guard, I was unauthorized to be there.
We considered several ways of sneaking me in (I could be Guillermo’s sister, another officer’s girlfriend . . .), but in the end the officer said I had better get permission from the second floor office. I went up again. I needed to submit an official petition in paper. I asked for paper. Then I went back down to the dock and composed the official petition standing up and surrounded by dead fish, Guillermo correcting the parts that didn’t sound formal enough (the end of it was “sin otro particular, les saluda atentamente” – I would have said something less inspired like “gracias”). He, my official escort, signed it, and I took it back to the office, where I also photocopied my passport (I was carrying it by chance!) and the nice-sounding Watson letter (also a coinkidink!). By this time the security guard was ready to strangle me – I had gone up and down the stairs enough times to try her security guarding patience – but I ended up being even more of pest, because I loitered in the building for two more hours until the head honcho had time to look at my papers and sign off on my request. I suspect that this usually takes more time, but I said to the intermediary, “Oh, but I am a visitor, difficult to reach and leaving so soon! Perhaps I should just wait here . . .” in many more words. I can go to the fish sales tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday – excellent.
Elated, I rushed back to the hostel to move my things to Alfonso’s apartment a few blocks away, where I’ll be staying for the next two nights. We got in touch through CouchSurfing, and he is . . . (can you guess?) extremely friendly!! He works in the film industry, doing sound and directing, and his short film has been shown in about a hundred festivals around the world! I have yet to watch it; I am full of eager anticipation. Oh BOY. We had lunch and talked (among other things, he told me that the beginning of my last post was inaccurate, because Galicia is not the same as Spain -- i.e. I shouldn't generalize so much), and then I set off again to buy a map of Galicia and sit on the green hills with big stones next to the sea. The wind was blowing so hard that even standing high above the waves I could feel their spray, and when I licked my lips I tasted salt. My scarf tried to smother me several times, but I fought back valiantly. I sat on a bench and watched fishing boats coming back to port (I am so confused about their schedules; must ask Guillermo), the clouds, the sun, the seagulls (that’s how I knew which ones were fishing boats – there are swarms of seagulls around them). I read. (“In Search of Time,” “Watchers of the Sky,” and “Peter Pan.” My Kindle is a gift from heaven.) (Noooo, silly, it is a gift from my mom.) On my way back to Alfonso’s apartment I had hot chocolate with churros, and I’m sure that my blood is sludgy already but oh it was worth it. Life is wonderful! And I’m waking up at 5:15 in the morning tomorrow!
Guillermo greeted me like an old friend, and introduced me to Mirela as “the girl I was telling you about who is doing the study!” Some of the men from yesterday were there again, and they talked with me when Guillermo and Mirela were busy. When they weren’t busy, they told me that I had to come some day at 6:00 in the morning to see the big fish sales – the 11:00 business was small beans, the leftovers. Oh ignorant am I! I continue to underestimate the scale of things. The only problem was that the sales take place inside the building – and, as I had been told by the security guard, I was unauthorized to be there.
We considered several ways of sneaking me in (I could be Guillermo’s sister, another officer’s girlfriend . . .), but in the end the officer said I had better get permission from the second floor office. I went up again. I needed to submit an official petition in paper. I asked for paper. Then I went back down to the dock and composed the official petition standing up and surrounded by dead fish, Guillermo correcting the parts that didn’t sound formal enough (the end of it was “sin otro particular, les saluda atentamente” – I would have said something less inspired like “gracias”). He, my official escort, signed it, and I took it back to the office, where I also photocopied my passport (I was carrying it by chance!) and the nice-sounding Watson letter (also a coinkidink!). By this time the security guard was ready to strangle me – I had gone up and down the stairs enough times to try her security guarding patience – but I ended up being even more of pest, because I loitered in the building for two more hours until the head honcho had time to look at my papers and sign off on my request. I suspect that this usually takes more time, but I said to the intermediary, “Oh, but I am a visitor, difficult to reach and leaving so soon! Perhaps I should just wait here . . .” in many more words. I can go to the fish sales tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday – excellent.
Elated, I rushed back to the hostel to move my things to Alfonso’s apartment a few blocks away, where I’ll be staying for the next two nights. We got in touch through CouchSurfing, and he is . . . (can you guess?) extremely friendly!! He works in the film industry, doing sound and directing, and his short film has been shown in about a hundred festivals around the world! I have yet to watch it; I am full of eager anticipation. Oh BOY. We had lunch and talked (among other things, he told me that the beginning of my last post was inaccurate, because Galicia is not the same as Spain -- i.e. I shouldn't generalize so much), and then I set off again to buy a map of Galicia and sit on the green hills with big stones next to the sea. The wind was blowing so hard that even standing high above the waves I could feel their spray, and when I licked my lips I tasted salt. My scarf tried to smother me several times, but I fought back valiantly. I sat on a bench and watched fishing boats coming back to port (I am so confused about their schedules; must ask Guillermo), the clouds, the sun, the seagulls (that’s how I knew which ones were fishing boats – there are swarms of seagulls around them). I read. (“In Search of Time,” “Watchers of the Sky,” and “Peter Pan.” My Kindle is a gift from heaven.) (Noooo, silly, it is a gift from my mom.) On my way back to Alfonso’s apartment I had hot chocolate with churros, and I’m sure that my blood is sludgy already but oh it was worth it. Life is wonderful! And I’m waking up at 5:15 in the morning tomorrow!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
An obstacle overcome (La Corunha, Spain)
Spanish people don’t smile very much. I, with my indiscriminate and overly enthusiastic greeting habits, must look like a raving lunatic to them. They, in turn, seemed too intimidating to approach (for all my apparent eagerness to make contact, I can be embarrassingly shy). But no! Every single Spanish person I have spoken with has been incredibly friendly – some have even smiled at me. And today I spoke with so many Spanish people! Let me tell you:
My original plan was to wake up at six in the morning to be at the docks when the fishermen arrived with their fresh catches. Two glitches: As I was still awake at one in the morning, I decided instead to wake up at 8:30, and the docks that I saw yesterday were not, in fact, the main docks for fishing boats, but instead the docks for recreational craft, which happened to house a few oddball fishing boats. It took me half an hour to walk to the main fishing docks, which are huge and full of trucks and storage garages and fenced off from the street. It took me another ten minutes to work up the courage to enter through the revolving metal gateway that said “ONLY AUTHORIZED ENTRY FOR PORT BUSINESS.” (My business is port-related. Right?) I saw no boats, because the entire waterfront was blocked by the trucks and storage garages, but I did see a cafeteria. I went into the cafeteria. There were about six other people in it – some of them looked like fishermen (rubber boots, yellow suits – I was the funny-looking one)! After one and half cups of coffee I felt bold enough to talk to the guy sitting next to me, and a one-hour conversation ensued. His name is Fran, and he told me everything he could about fishing. Types of fish (the ones that weren’t already on my list from yesterday), seasons to fish them (the bonitos are passing through now), ways to fish them, places to fish them, his family history (father and grandfather both fishermen), where to find more information. He, too, was a stranger to A Corunha; he is usually on his boat for a week at a time and only gets off to unload and take the occasional weekend break. I asked him if he could show me his ship – he said yes!!! So we went to the docks and he gave me the grand tour of the Ria de Muros Marin. He showed me the navigational systems (very high-tech), the quarters for the crew of eight, the big room where the fish are cleaned, the storage bay, the nets and the cranks to operate them. I met the cook and the mechanic. Very friendly, all of them. They smiled at me.
After thanking him profusely, I went to the Lonja, another dock where the fresh fish are brought by smaller boats at around 11:00 each day (not 6:00! Thank God I decided to sleep in). There were about thirty people crowding around a few crates of fresh fish, and every single one of them wanted to tell me about them. There were chincho and chicharro and jurela (all the same fish, but of different sizes), abadejo (the same as zarreta), bicuda (the same as maragota and merlon), pinto, chaparella, rayas, peces aguja, pezcadillo (same as merluza), faneca, escacho . . . I’ll fail the quiz tomorrow. But there is for sure a tomorrow, because Guillermo, one of the fishermen, offered (of his own volition!) (I didn’t even suggest this to him!) to introduce me to more people and talk to me more about what he does! AND I will have official permission to enter the docks area, because I went to the port authority offices and spoke with a man who should by now have sent me an e-mail (no internet as I write this) that I can print out and wave in the police officers’ faces when they try to kick me out. What a law-abider I am. And how lucky!
In the afternoon I went to the Casa de las Ciencias, a small but very hands-on science museum, where I learned about waves and magnetism and poison dart frogs, and I spent the evening with a man named Simon, whom I contacted through CouchSurfing and who is (also!) extremely friendly. (Everyone here is extremely friendly!) We went to the Monte de San Pedro, which is on top of a big hill overlooking the city on one side and the ocean on the other, and then to Santa Cruz, a distant part of A Corunha with another castle. He tolerated my interrogation about Galician culture and history and his life, and on Saturday I might go to an old village with him and a few friends. He also told me about places where fishermen use traditional methods – I have villages to add to the list! I’d better start crossing other ones out.
I’m no longer feeling lost and insecure – all I have to do is learn everything there is to know about fishing. And a lot of people seem eager to help me do so.
My original plan was to wake up at six in the morning to be at the docks when the fishermen arrived with their fresh catches. Two glitches: As I was still awake at one in the morning, I decided instead to wake up at 8:30, and the docks that I saw yesterday were not, in fact, the main docks for fishing boats, but instead the docks for recreational craft, which happened to house a few oddball fishing boats. It took me half an hour to walk to the main fishing docks, which are huge and full of trucks and storage garages and fenced off from the street. It took me another ten minutes to work up the courage to enter through the revolving metal gateway that said “ONLY AUTHORIZED ENTRY FOR PORT BUSINESS.” (My business is port-related. Right?) I saw no boats, because the entire waterfront was blocked by the trucks and storage garages, but I did see a cafeteria. I went into the cafeteria. There were about six other people in it – some of them looked like fishermen (rubber boots, yellow suits – I was the funny-looking one)! After one and half cups of coffee I felt bold enough to talk to the guy sitting next to me, and a one-hour conversation ensued. His name is Fran, and he told me everything he could about fishing. Types of fish (the ones that weren’t already on my list from yesterday), seasons to fish them (the bonitos are passing through now), ways to fish them, places to fish them, his family history (father and grandfather both fishermen), where to find more information. He, too, was a stranger to A Corunha; he is usually on his boat for a week at a time and only gets off to unload and take the occasional weekend break. I asked him if he could show me his ship – he said yes!!! So we went to the docks and he gave me the grand tour of the Ria de Muros Marin. He showed me the navigational systems (very high-tech), the quarters for the crew of eight, the big room where the fish are cleaned, the storage bay, the nets and the cranks to operate them. I met the cook and the mechanic. Very friendly, all of them. They smiled at me.
After thanking him profusely, I went to the Lonja, another dock where the fresh fish are brought by smaller boats at around 11:00 each day (not 6:00! Thank God I decided to sleep in). There were about thirty people crowding around a few crates of fresh fish, and every single one of them wanted to tell me about them. There were chincho and chicharro and jurela (all the same fish, but of different sizes), abadejo (the same as zarreta), bicuda (the same as maragota and merlon), pinto, chaparella, rayas, peces aguja, pezcadillo (same as merluza), faneca, escacho . . . I’ll fail the quiz tomorrow. But there is for sure a tomorrow, because Guillermo, one of the fishermen, offered (of his own volition!) (I didn’t even suggest this to him!) to introduce me to more people and talk to me more about what he does! AND I will have official permission to enter the docks area, because I went to the port authority offices and spoke with a man who should by now have sent me an e-mail (no internet as I write this) that I can print out and wave in the police officers’ faces when they try to kick me out. What a law-abider I am. And how lucky!
In the afternoon I went to the Casa de las Ciencias, a small but very hands-on science museum, where I learned about waves and magnetism and poison dart frogs, and I spent the evening with a man named Simon, whom I contacted through CouchSurfing and who is (also!) extremely friendly. (Everyone here is extremely friendly!) We went to the Monte de San Pedro, which is on top of a big hill overlooking the city on one side and the ocean on the other, and then to Santa Cruz, a distant part of A Corunha with another castle. He tolerated my interrogation about Galician culture and history and his life, and on Saturday I might go to an old village with him and a few friends. He also told me about places where fishermen use traditional methods – I have villages to add to the list! I’d better start crossing other ones out.
I’m no longer feeling lost and insecure – all I have to do is learn everything there is to know about fishing. And a lot of people seem eager to help me do so.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A walk around the city and a plan (La Corunha, Spain)
(I promise that my entries will get shorter.)
I did not take several thousand pictures yesterday afternoon, but I made up for my sloth today (taking at least 20 – at this rate I’ll have over 7000 by the end of the year). To my great surprise, I woke up past noon, and only because the girl in the room next to mine started moving around – my room has no windows. It’s okay, though; the sun doesn’t set until around ten, so I had plenty of time to explore. My “exploration” was really just a long walk on a path well-trodden – the Paseo Maritimo, which goes, literally, around the city (ha!). I saw:
1) Fishermen on boats! I didn’t approach them, though. That’s for Very Near Future Irene, who will go to the docks tonight at sunset and ask if she can get on a boat. Or talk to someone.
2) Fish in the water! Schools of little silver guys and a solitary few big silver guys.
3) A man fishing on a dock! He told me the names of all the fish, and that he was a ninety-year-old ex-fisherman with grandchildren my age. When I asked if I could talk with him longer, though, he said NO (more politely than that). My first rejection! I’d better get used to it.
4) The Castelo de San Anton, which is now an archaeological museum housing artifacts from many centuries. This island fort (now connected to the mainland) also served as a prison. Now the top of it is a pretty garden.
5) Half-naked people. They are everywhere. There are boulders all along the water’s edge; there are half-naked people on every boulder. The sandy beaches, too, are covered with them. They remind me of nesting birds, because each family has set up their little bunch of towels at a set distance from all the other families’ (~6 feet) – some sort of maximum density law.
6) Baby Stonehenge (of modern-man making and whose purpose I have yet to learn) and the Casa de las Palabras, an open structure with Muslim architechture that serves as the burial ground for soldiers of Muslim descent in the . . . war against the French in 1809? PERHAPS.
7) The Torre de Hercules, a lighthouse built by the Strong Man himself (not). It is the oldest functional lighthouse in either Europe or the world (superlatives are always so tricky).
8) Fish in tanks! At the Aquarium Finisterrae, which was more of a museum than a menagerie. (This is good, because paying to ogle at captive animals always makes me feel rotten.) I struggled to read over the yells of several dozen children, which were so penetrating that I thought they were coming from within my own head (“Oh God, I’ve gone crazy!”). The woman giving them the tour gave me a “shoot me” look as she walked by, so I wasn’t alone. I guess that I am pro-education, though, so I’ll give a belated cheer: yeah little kiddies learning about the little fishies! I’m worried about what they’re learning, though – I saw two interesting exhibits, one of them answering the question “Are the oceans rising?” and the other answering the question “Can all the fish in the oceans disappear from fishing?” The answer to the first one was (in more words) “Yes, but the oceans rise and fall periodically.” No mention of global warming and the melting of the ice caps. The answer to the second was “No, because, just like humans have learned to farm land animals, we are learning to farm sea animals.” Not that fish farms are very damaging to the environment, and not that the fish kept in them live under awful conditions.
Speaking of fish: I decided a while ago to suspend my vegetarianism for this year, so that I can fully enjoy the cuisine of the countries I’m visiting (i.e. eat more than bread and chocolate, which is my usual diet – now I’ll eat bread and chocolate and meat!). I haven’t eaten seafood here yet, but I will soon.
Last night I cuddled up in bed and made a (tentative tentative) plan for the rest of my three months here:
I’ll stay in A Corunha until June 24th (so that I see the bonfires of San Juan on the night of the 23rd – they cover the entire beach!), when I will go to A Guarda, at the southwesternmost tip of Galicia. I’ll either work my way up the coast or spend a lot of time in one or a few places (depending on how my “research” goes), but I will at some point reach Vigo and visit the Illas Cies, an island nature reserve. I’ll go to Pontevedra and take a detour to Santiago de Compostela for the big celebration on July 25th. Then on to the Costa da Morte (ominous) and back north to Betanzos by August 14th, to be there for the festival of San Roque/ Os Caneiros, which lasts until August 25th. I hope to be in Viveiro on the 23rd, though, for the Romaria do Naseiro, and on September 13th I want to be all the way back west in Muxia for the Romaria da Nosa Senhora da Barca. (I got all excited about festivals after finding a guide on them.)
DOABLE?! Who knows? I may end up staying in one village for weeks. But if Restless Irene prevails, I’ll try it.
Now I’m off to eat dinner (fish?) and go to the docks. Wish me luck.
I did not take several thousand pictures yesterday afternoon, but I made up for my sloth today (taking at least 20 – at this rate I’ll have over 7000 by the end of the year). To my great surprise, I woke up past noon, and only because the girl in the room next to mine started moving around – my room has no windows. It’s okay, though; the sun doesn’t set until around ten, so I had plenty of time to explore. My “exploration” was really just a long walk on a path well-trodden – the Paseo Maritimo, which goes, literally, around the city (ha!). I saw:
1) Fishermen on boats! I didn’t approach them, though. That’s for Very Near Future Irene, who will go to the docks tonight at sunset and ask if she can get on a boat. Or talk to someone.
2) Fish in the water! Schools of little silver guys and a solitary few big silver guys.
3) A man fishing on a dock! He told me the names of all the fish, and that he was a ninety-year-old ex-fisherman with grandchildren my age. When I asked if I could talk with him longer, though, he said NO (more politely than that). My first rejection! I’d better get used to it.
4) The Castelo de San Anton, which is now an archaeological museum housing artifacts from many centuries. This island fort (now connected to the mainland) also served as a prison. Now the top of it is a pretty garden.
5) Half-naked people. They are everywhere. There are boulders all along the water’s edge; there are half-naked people on every boulder. The sandy beaches, too, are covered with them. They remind me of nesting birds, because each family has set up their little bunch of towels at a set distance from all the other families’ (~6 feet) – some sort of maximum density law.
6) Baby Stonehenge (of modern-man making and whose purpose I have yet to learn) and the Casa de las Palabras, an open structure with Muslim architechture that serves as the burial ground for soldiers of Muslim descent in the . . . war against the French in 1809? PERHAPS.
7) The Torre de Hercules, a lighthouse built by the Strong Man himself (not). It is the oldest functional lighthouse in either Europe or the world (superlatives are always so tricky).
8) Fish in tanks! At the Aquarium Finisterrae, which was more of a museum than a menagerie. (This is good, because paying to ogle at captive animals always makes me feel rotten.) I struggled to read over the yells of several dozen children, which were so penetrating that I thought they were coming from within my own head (“Oh God, I’ve gone crazy!”). The woman giving them the tour gave me a “shoot me” look as she walked by, so I wasn’t alone. I guess that I am pro-education, though, so I’ll give a belated cheer: yeah little kiddies learning about the little fishies! I’m worried about what they’re learning, though – I saw two interesting exhibits, one of them answering the question “Are the oceans rising?” and the other answering the question “Can all the fish in the oceans disappear from fishing?” The answer to the first one was (in more words) “Yes, but the oceans rise and fall periodically.” No mention of global warming and the melting of the ice caps. The answer to the second was “No, because, just like humans have learned to farm land animals, we are learning to farm sea animals.” Not that fish farms are very damaging to the environment, and not that the fish kept in them live under awful conditions.
Speaking of fish: I decided a while ago to suspend my vegetarianism for this year, so that I can fully enjoy the cuisine of the countries I’m visiting (i.e. eat more than bread and chocolate, which is my usual diet – now I’ll eat bread and chocolate and meat!). I haven’t eaten seafood here yet, but I will soon.
Last night I cuddled up in bed and made a (tentative tentative) plan for the rest of my three months here:
I’ll stay in A Corunha until June 24th (so that I see the bonfires of San Juan on the night of the 23rd – they cover the entire beach!), when I will go to A Guarda, at the southwesternmost tip of Galicia. I’ll either work my way up the coast or spend a lot of time in one or a few places (depending on how my “research” goes), but I will at some point reach Vigo and visit the Illas Cies, an island nature reserve. I’ll go to Pontevedra and take a detour to Santiago de Compostela for the big celebration on July 25th. Then on to the Costa da Morte (ominous) and back north to Betanzos by August 14th, to be there for the festival of San Roque/ Os Caneiros, which lasts until August 25th. I hope to be in Viveiro on the 23rd, though, for the Romaria do Naseiro, and on September 13th I want to be all the way back west in Muxia for the Romaria da Nosa Senhora da Barca. (I got all excited about festivals after finding a guide on them.)
DOABLE?! Who knows? I may end up staying in one village for weeks. But if Restless Irene prevails, I’ll try it.
Now I’m off to eat dinner (fish?) and go to the docks. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
An arrival (La Corunha, Spain)
I am in A Corunha! It is lovely! There is a museum on clocks! And I can go right up to the fishermen (fisherpeople? fisherhumans?) on the docks in the morning – by 7:00 am, my host informs me. I'm staying at a hostel run by an older couple for the first three nights of my stay, after which I hope to move onto someone's couch or floor (I am a newbie couchsurfer!). Now I'm going to go on a walk, take several thousand pictures, and then pass out on my very own bed, which is in my very own room – luxury.
An introduction (Madrid, Spain)
Greetings, amoebos and amoebas! And a hearty welcome to this blog, which I will be keeping all of this year while I travel to and through Spain, Mexico, Norway and Chile with a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Since this is the first entry, I should explain what I'm doing in all of those different places. (People always ask: “Hmm . . .which country doesn't belong?” Poor Norway. But the joke is on the other three, because the fact that they are Spanish-speaking countries is only part of the reason that I'm visiting them.) My project has to do with time – specifically, concepts of time in different natural environments and cultures. Where we grow up, and in what culture, deeply affects our lifestyles, our livelihoods, and our philosophies. I grew up in the United States, where clocks reign supreme and faster is better. I quickly learned to arrive promptly to appointments and turn assignments in by their deadlines. So far, my life has been a series of steps, a cause-and-effect chain, if you will, leading me to the next goal – linear progress – and the steps are a direct result of my doings and the doings of everyone else around me. All of the events that will take place in the next hour will be the result of the events that take place in this hour, a complex, chaotic system, but one with some sort of direction. Things don't just change; they develop. This is, at least, my very western view of things. I am also aware, though, of another pattern, one that shows up at many different scales, namely, the cyclical nature of events. This seems not only to be the rule of the universe – things revolve around other things and rotate about their own axes continuously, so that on the surface of our planet we have cycles like the day and the seasons – but also the rule of life. Individual beings are born, procreate, and die, over and over again (well, not the same ones over and over again); looking at the larger picture, there appear also to be waves of lifeforms (species are born, procreate, and die, over and over again); and even the planet undergoes continuous “birth” and “death” through processes like erosion and uplift. I'm not sure what my place is in each of these cycles, but they have certainly all shaped my existence somehow.
So why, then, am I going to Spain, Mexico, Norway and Chile? Each of these places is home to a different kind of natural cycle with which human beings directly interact. In Galicia, Spain, fishing has been the most important industry for centuries. I will visit several Galician fishing villages and cities ranging in size to explore the extent to which commercialization affects how daily routine is governed by the tides and movement patterns of the fish. In late September I'll travel to the state of Michoacán in Mexico to witness the arrival of the monarch butterflies to their winter grounds after a trip of thousands of miles. Indigenous farmers have used this annual event to plan their planting and harvest schedules for centuries, and more recently, tourism has become a strong source of income for the region. I'm interested to learn about the folklore surrounding the butterflies and see how tourism has changed their significance in the local community. I'll be in Norway during the polar night, when the sun doesn't rise above the horizon. After overcoming my deep SAD-induced depression, I hope to figure out how people measure time and organize their lives in the absence of the planet's most basic natural cycle. My final stop is Chile, where different volcanoes have erupted with different frequencies – some dozens of times in the past few centuries and others only once in 10,000 years. This range of historical precedent makes for the perfect environment in which to study time's effect on individual and group memory, and also to test the possibility of awareness of geologic time. That's a very brief overview of my proposed project. Here are some topics that I find particularly interesting:
- Cycles vs. lines vs. a combination thereof vs. what else?
What role does religion play in this? The Bible is a very linear text, a narrative, and the basis of western time thought. How do people with kinds of religious texts approach time and their part in the greater whole? What does belief in an afterlife imply? Reincarnation?
- Scales of time – how short and how long makes sense to us (we who live mere centuries to the Earth's billions of years)?
How does proximity to active geological changes, like volcanoes, affect our understanding of geological timescales?
Cosmology – how old do people think the universe is? Does it have a beginning or an end? Is it one of many?
What's the smallest significant unit of time? At what scales do people think different (fast) processes occur?
- How do people visualize time? (And how else can we communicate thoughts about time other than with words?)
Spatial paradigms (rivers flowing past, a fourth dimension, etc.)
Counting – ribbons of numbers? Is time discrete?
- Memory (collective and individual)
How do groups of people remember catastrophes?
What folklore and myths are passed on from generation to generation? What effect do they have on people's current lifestyles?
- Physical perception of time
Do we have an “internal clock”? What is counting in our heads? Do we all do it at the same rate? If not, what affects how we do it? A while ago I read a short essay by Richard Feynman in which he times himself counting to sixty while partaking in a number of different activities – walking up and down the stairs, reading, writing . . . singing? Well, I've forgotten exactly what he does, but he consistently counts to sixty in the same amount of time regardless of what else he's doing.
I should explain the url of this blog! Why am I traveling a la Billy Pilgrim? Who is that? WELL. Billy Pilgrim is the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's book “Slaughterhouse Five,” in which the concept of time features prominently. Billy Pilgrim is a more or less ordinary man who not only travels through time (involuntarily and unexpectedly), but is also abducted by a species of alien, the Tralfamadorians, that perceives time completely differently from us humans. In the spaceship, the following exchange takes place:
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
Tralfamadorians not only know that the circumstances of the universe are set; they can see time like we humans see mountain ranges. When they look around, they see not only different spaces, but different times, and they can choose not to look at the unpleasant ones. Billy Pilgrim finds this unsettling; the Tralfamadorians have wars just as terrible as our WWII, in which Billy Pilgrim has fought (will fight, is always fighting?), but they simply ignore them. Instead of concerning themselves with the unpreventable, they erase it from their minds. They are apathetic to an extreme. There is a beautiful side to the Tralfamadorians' experience, too:
Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes -- "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.
The book is excellent, and I highly recommend it. But back to my blog – get it?! I am traveling through time, too!
And speaking of traveling: So far the trip has gone well! I'm typing these words in the Madrid airport; lightning delayed my flight from Philadelphia and I missed my connection to A Corunha, where my journey begins. The man sitting next to me on the plane was a lesson in character building (sent by the travel gods, I'm sure, who are in charge of my education for the next year). He sang to himself, drummed on the armrests and used the metal of his spiral notebook as a percussion instrument, and danced. He also talked incessantly. When he curled up into a ball to sleep he took up more space than he did when he was awake (how?). But I have learned: 1. Deal with cramped quarters or be miserable. 2. “Obnoxious” is another word for “amusing.” I'm ready for anything.
I have to board my flight!
So why, then, am I going to Spain, Mexico, Norway and Chile? Each of these places is home to a different kind of natural cycle with which human beings directly interact. In Galicia, Spain, fishing has been the most important industry for centuries. I will visit several Galician fishing villages and cities ranging in size to explore the extent to which commercialization affects how daily routine is governed by the tides and movement patterns of the fish. In late September I'll travel to the state of Michoacán in Mexico to witness the arrival of the monarch butterflies to their winter grounds after a trip of thousands of miles. Indigenous farmers have used this annual event to plan their planting and harvest schedules for centuries, and more recently, tourism has become a strong source of income for the region. I'm interested to learn about the folklore surrounding the butterflies and see how tourism has changed their significance in the local community. I'll be in Norway during the polar night, when the sun doesn't rise above the horizon. After overcoming my deep SAD-induced depression, I hope to figure out how people measure time and organize their lives in the absence of the planet's most basic natural cycle. My final stop is Chile, where different volcanoes have erupted with different frequencies – some dozens of times in the past few centuries and others only once in 10,000 years. This range of historical precedent makes for the perfect environment in which to study time's effect on individual and group memory, and also to test the possibility of awareness of geologic time. That's a very brief overview of my proposed project. Here are some topics that I find particularly interesting:
- Cycles vs. lines vs. a combination thereof vs. what else?
What role does religion play in this? The Bible is a very linear text, a narrative, and the basis of western time thought. How do people with kinds of religious texts approach time and their part in the greater whole? What does belief in an afterlife imply? Reincarnation?
- Scales of time – how short and how long makes sense to us (we who live mere centuries to the Earth's billions of years)?
How does proximity to active geological changes, like volcanoes, affect our understanding of geological timescales?
Cosmology – how old do people think the universe is? Does it have a beginning or an end? Is it one of many?
What's the smallest significant unit of time? At what scales do people think different (fast) processes occur?
- How do people visualize time? (And how else can we communicate thoughts about time other than with words?)
Spatial paradigms (rivers flowing past, a fourth dimension, etc.)
Counting – ribbons of numbers? Is time discrete?
- Memory (collective and individual)
How do groups of people remember catastrophes?
What folklore and myths are passed on from generation to generation? What effect do they have on people's current lifestyles?
- Physical perception of time
Do we have an “internal clock”? What is counting in our heads? Do we all do it at the same rate? If not, what affects how we do it? A while ago I read a short essay by Richard Feynman in which he times himself counting to sixty while partaking in a number of different activities – walking up and down the stairs, reading, writing . . . singing? Well, I've forgotten exactly what he does, but he consistently counts to sixty in the same amount of time regardless of what else he's doing.
I should explain the url of this blog! Why am I traveling a la Billy Pilgrim? Who is that? WELL. Billy Pilgrim is the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's book “Slaughterhouse Five,” in which the concept of time features prominently. Billy Pilgrim is a more or less ordinary man who not only travels through time (involuntarily and unexpectedly), but is also abducted by a species of alien, the Tralfamadorians, that perceives time completely differently from us humans. In the spaceship, the following exchange takes place:
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
Tralfamadorians not only know that the circumstances of the universe are set; they can see time like we humans see mountain ranges. When they look around, they see not only different spaces, but different times, and they can choose not to look at the unpleasant ones. Billy Pilgrim finds this unsettling; the Tralfamadorians have wars just as terrible as our WWII, in which Billy Pilgrim has fought (will fight, is always fighting?), but they simply ignore them. Instead of concerning themselves with the unpreventable, they erase it from their minds. They are apathetic to an extreme. There is a beautiful side to the Tralfamadorians' experience, too:
Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes -- "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.
The book is excellent, and I highly recommend it. But back to my blog – get it?! I am traveling through time, too!
And speaking of traveling: So far the trip has gone well! I'm typing these words in the Madrid airport; lightning delayed my flight from Philadelphia and I missed my connection to A Corunha, where my journey begins. The man sitting next to me on the plane was a lesson in character building (sent by the travel gods, I'm sure, who are in charge of my education for the next year). He sang to himself, drummed on the armrests and used the metal of his spiral notebook as a percussion instrument, and danced. He also talked incessantly. When he curled up into a ball to sleep he took up more space than he did when he was awake (how?). But I have learned: 1. Deal with cramped quarters or be miserable. 2. “Obnoxious” is another word for “amusing.” I'm ready for anything.
I have to board my flight!
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